How to replace stock ballast with aftermarket ballast with Amp to D2S Adapter

If you read our previous article about how to apply the D2S adapter to your retrofit project, you should have a brief understanding about how the D2S adapter works. In fact, these D2S adapters can also used to replace your stock ballast with aftermarket ballast as well. Consider a stock ballast costs around couple hundred, and an aftermarket ballast cost around $50 a pair, it is something good to know in case you need to replace your stock HID ballast. I’ll suggest you to read how to apply the D2S adapter to your retrofit project if you want to learn more about these D2S adapter plugs for aftermarket ballasts.

In most cases, these D2S adapters are plug and play with you headlights plug. In some cases, the plug might be different for your car, you will need to rewire the ballast in order to install. We are not going to cover the plug and play method since it is very easy and straightforward, we will go ahead to cover the route that you need to cut and rewire your headlights.

D2S or D2R HID Ballast Replacement with Aftermarket Ballast

Step 1: Get access to behind headlight. Some vehicles you may need to remove the bumper or get
access through wheel well.

- Red: Power Harness Blue: Ballast Yellow: Headlight Bulb Harness
- Shown below you can see the OEM ballast you will remove.

Once you have everything removed you will need to mount the new ballast with the bracket provided.
You can mount anywhere, however we choose the OEM location. You can use RTV seal around the hole
at the bottom of the H/L housing where the OEM once sat. In this case there are 3 screws used and we
RTV’d those too. Be sure to just stay inside the OEM molded bracket area and you will be fine for space.
MAKE SURE TO SEAL ANY EXPOSED AREA OF THE BOTTOM HOLE WITH THE RTV

Now you will cut the OEM power harness off of the OEM ballast. This is the wire that feeds ballast 12V.

Next you will crimp the end of the OEM power harness to the new power harness that plugs into the
New Ballast. You can see in the pictures that we trimmed it down to have just a little bit of slack and
then we heat sealed it with the heat shrinking wrap to make waterproof. Another good tip is to stagger
your splice so you can slide the wrap over it easily. Simply cut one of the 2 wires on the harness the
length of the connector and then do the opposite on the power harness. Short red, long black on one
and Long red, short black on the other. This makes for a nice clean and waterproof splice. Again, you
may choose to go electrical tape, but I think this will hold up MUCH better.

This is what it looks like after splicing the New power harness into the OEM connector that you
reattached and the New Ballast clicked into the bracket you installed, pretty clean huh? You can see
how the heat shrink wrapping seals everything in nice and neat.
You will also notice the red circled hole where we drilled through the housing to pass the New H/L
harness through later. This is the passenger side H/L.

Now I am showing you the Driver side H/L with the H/L harness as it passed through the hole you drilled.

Notice that we had to cut out a portion of the OEM molded ballast housing (driver side only) to plug the
New Power Harness into the New ballast since both ballasts face the same way and we are working on
both right and left H/L’s

Again, you do not need to install the ballast here. You can choose to install the ballast anywhere in your
engine bay as long as your wire reaches. You can use existing bolts anywhere.

Now connect the New H/L harness to the New Power Harness with the 2 slide connectors and push
excess wires into the housing closest to the turn signal since there is a lot of room. Then connect the
New H/L Harness to the new bulb you installed.

Here is the nearly finished product with the RTV around the hole you drilled to protect from water and
air. After this coat I did put on a whole other layer for added piece of mind. A good tip is after you fill
and circle the hole like you are using caulk, you can wet your finger to mold the RTV to shape and fill
without it sticking to your hand. I also tested the system before the final re-install…just to be safe!